30 Pieces of a Novel (84 page)

Later he thinks maybe he should take a shower too. The two of them in bed, both clean. Fresh sheets and pillowcases, the new place and a sea breeze. Their bodies smelling of soap, hair from shampoo, if he shampoos too. She always does when she takes a shower, or at least always comes out of the shower with her hair drenched or a towel around it. He wants to go to bed with her now. It's late, he's tired, she must be; food's been put away, dishes have been cleaned—they both brought them in; he washed them the way she told him: in an old metal dishpan because they've a well and it's supposed to be a dry summer and anyway it's just good sense to conserve—and he doesn't want to go to bed so late where he'll be too tired to make love, or fall asleep soon after he hits the bed. Sleep will be nice when it comes but he wants to make love his first night here, sort of as a culmination to—well, it should be obvious by now without his explaining it. He yawns; she yawns too and smiles and motions with her eyebrows and eyes to the upstairs. Fire's just about out and room's getting a bit chilly. Should he put a few sticks on? She left a pile of them by the fireplace. Then she might think he wants to stay downstairs a while longer, and she's already motioned
up
. She said while they were eating—when he asked, “If we were to head up to bed and the fire was still going, what would we use to douse it, water?”—to just let it burn itself out. “Don't worry”—when he looked leery—“it's safe. I've done it plenty of times.” He wants it to be like this all summer. Coffee and a newspaper or book early morning, work during the day, maybe some lovemaking and an excursion or swim in the afternoon, a two- or three-mile run somewhere in there, and then, at night, this. Though he knows it can't stay this way all the time. No matter how much he tells himself to do the opposite, he can screw things up. Say the wrong thing, do it; he's been known for that. Getting irritable and sometimes acerbic over the simplest mishap or remark she makes. The difference between her and the other women he's gone with is not so much that she takes it but—what? Isn't acerbic back. Thinks it's part of him, not the most likable but a small part, and the good outweighs the bad and so forth, and eventually this tendency to fits of bitterness and sarcasm will go away, though with her congenial apprisals and reminders of it to help it along. (Now there's a mouthful he's not known for.) She's just more accepting of these weaker elements in him (but stow it and, in the final version, leave out). They let the fire burn. (Goes without saying.) She sticks several large towels into a large round wicker basket and arranges the cats on top of them. She says they'll stay there till morning except to get out to use the litter box or to get some kibbles or water and then they'll readjust themselves when one of them climbs back in. Quatrefoil, a word he'll use for the basket arrangement further into the summer when he accidentally comes across an illustration of one in the dictionary next to the word, though he doesn't tell her that because she seemed, when he defined it, impressed. They turn off the lights downstairs. He locked the front door even though she said, when he asked where's the key for it, that all the break-ins around here are in winter when the homeowners from away are away and the wealthier retirees and transplants are in Arizona or Florida, and the last serious personal-injury crime apparently took place outside of anyone's living memory, and a few of these locals live past a hundred, and he said, How does she know there hasn't been a rash of them since last summer? “If it makes you feel less vulnerable, lock up, but we'll both be more comfortable if you try to get used to the country, and I say that with no smugness.” “And the keys to the back doors?” and she said, “There aren't any. Those doors the caretaker nails up after we leave.” They go upstairs. On the landing he remembers he didn't wash up and pee and he gives her his glasses and book and goes downstairs, crosses the back deck to get to the bathroom/shower stall, but stops to pee off the deck into the woods, thinking, while he's doing it, that this will have to be one of the great evening pleasures in being here, peeing and looking at the sky at the same time and not caring where the pee lands. Then he washes up, killing about ten mosquitoes while he's in there, and goes upstairs. She's in bed, only light in the room from a small lamp on her night table. On the other night table are his glasses and book, so they'll be sleeping on the same sides of the bed as they do in their apartments. He'd prefer her side, nearer the window; he wants to feel the breeze and look out at night, maybe see the moon. The advantage of the side she chose for him is he's able to hold her breasts with his right hand while they sleep, which might be why she likes him to sleep on that side too. Her breasts are clearly visible, covers up only to her waist. She's sitting up, no top on (that's how he should have put it), with probably nothing on under the covers too. He takes off his shirt. She watches and smiles, but he knows—she's told him—that seeing his bare chest or even his whole body nude doesn't give her anything near the charge that looking at hers does to him. He's sure her diaphragm's in. He breathes in deeply and thinks he can detect the contraceptive cream along with what seems a seaweed smell from outside. She didn't turn on his night-table light, which may mean she wants to turn off hers and the room to be dark soon as he gets into bed. Her period ended a week ago, he remembers her saying then. Good thing it isn't the first or second night of it. She'll rarely make love then, though he's said he doesn't mind the blood. But she finds it messy and sort of unwholesome, she once said, “and it doesn't exactly act as a lubricant for me either.” He forgot to shower. Should have at least swabbed a damp washcloth on his underarms and wiped his anus with wet toilet paper, but he'll try to keep them away from her face. He puts his watch, notebook, handkerchief, and pen on his night table and gets on the bed. He pulls the covers down and she's naked. They almost immediately start kissing. First he strokes her hair back and playfully pinches her chin and she gnashes her teeth as if she's going to bite his pinching fingers. She doesn't turn off the light. Could be she wants to see them in their coupling positions. Or, because they're above the covers, to swat the mosquitoes before they start biting. Her face doesn't look ghoulish in this light, so his probably doesn't either. He wouldn't want either of them to look ghoulish while they were kissing and making love. The light's almost as faint as one can be in a regular lamp, so he wonders how she'll be able to read by it and if his is the same and he'll have to get a stronger bulb. He'd like to tell her now how he feels about things. To come up from the kissing to say what kind of night it is for him. That so far it's about as good a night as he's had in his life, and he's not just saying that, and because she is what she is and he loves her so much and this is just the start of their stay here, he expects plenty more of these nights in the future. (Of course “in the future,” so scratch that.) That the best probably has to encompass the present and potential. Meaning … but what did he have in mind? (And shouldn't there be something in there about the past, and what about his use of “encompass” over “include”? Never want to sound fake. Anyway, don't keep that business about the present and potential if he can't figure it out next time he goes over it.) They're on their backs, smiling (adoringly? lovingly? nah, just smiling) at each other. He loves it when her mouth's slightly parted and her teeth show. She grabs hold of his penis, and he runs his hand up her body from her thigh, thinks how smooth her skin is and how fresh her breath was and how soft her hair and lips and probably that she shaved her legs while she was in the shower, and settles his hand on her breast and says—rests his hand on her breast and says—

Later, he wants to say how beautiful everything was tonight right to the end, but she seems asleep. She's on her side, he's holding her with his arms from behind, and she doesn't move. He pulls the covers up over her shoulder. She shut off the light soon after they'd made love. He didn't see her do it. Suddenly the room was black, and then after a few seconds there was a little light from outside. He rubs her nipple, and she doesn't say anything or stir. Don't do it again. If she's asleep she won't want to be woken up by his doing that. They'd made love, it was long and strong and so on (that should be sufficient as a description of it), and now she's very tired and wants to sleep. That's what she'd say, minus the long and strong and commentary on it, if he were rubbing her nipple and woke her up, he's almost sure. If he persisted after that, which he's done when they hadn't already made love and he wanted to, she'd get mad. He wonders if she's dreaming. If so, of what? If he's in it: their lovemaking, his hand on her breast now and the rubbing before, and things like that. She drove half the way here and during it complained her eyes hurt and she may need glasses. Would he also, when he takes off her clothes when they start making love, take off her glasses? They got up early to get an early start. (He knows he's said that but he's making a point, which is what?) That they've been going seventeen-eighteen hours straight. Where does the energy come from for that kind of strenuous love-making after so long and arduous a day? But he's not tired. That could be for a number of reasons—his excitement at being here with her, the sea air and that it's a new place, all that coffee on the road—and he thinks lots of activity makes him even more active, till he just drops. That so? Doesn't know. He's just saying, which he often does. (He doesn't see the need for any of that after the dreaming part, and maybe not that either, so
out
.) He continues to hold her breath and shuts his eyes.
Breast
. One hand on it; other arm, because it was starting to hurt under her shoulder, pulled out and tucked under his pillow. This is how he likes to sleep. What he returns to several times a night after he turns over and maybe sleeps for a while and then turns back to her: left arm under the pillow under his head, right arm around her and its hand usually on her breast, though sometimes, when he tries and she lets him (maybe one time out of five), on her crotch, and maybe one time out of ten with his finger on her clitoris or inside. But this way—hand here, arm there, which is what he started out to say and which he hopes will be his evening's final resting place—he can fall asleep faster, and the faster he does, the less chance he'll annoy her, which he doesn't want to do because… but he feels himself drifting off, so just go to sleep. He almost always says good night to her when he's dozing off or she says she is. Sometimes when he's said it she didn't answer, because she was already asleep or so close to it that even if she tried to answer, she couldn't. But before he also gets too drowsy to speak, he says—

He's dreaming he's in a forest: thick woods like the ones they drove past once they got off the main highway and headed east on a two-lane road for the ocean about an hour away. He's sleeping in a tent in a sleeping bag. (He's sleeping in a sleeping bag in a tent. He's in a tent, sleeping in a sleeping bag.) Drifting off, really—thinking how nice it'll be for him and healthy and restful for his mother after he picks her up at the airport tomorrow to camp out with him—when a claw rips through the tent, slitting it cleanly to the floor. A bear's claw, then a big bear on its hind legs, roaring at him as it walks into the tent. Behind it are two cubs tossing a live fish back and forth. He tries unzipping the bag but it's locked at the top. He finds the key in his pajama shirt pocket, unlocks and unzips the bag, and jumps out and grabs the tent's center pole and begins swinging it at the bear, the tent collapsing on the four of them. The bear throws off the tent, grabs the pole and snaps it in two with its teeth and eats part of it, and flings the other to the cubs and makes clicking sounds with its teeth as if they should also eat it, and then comes at him, arms out and claws open as if it intends to strangle him, the cubs now scratching and biting his ankles. “End this dream, end it before I'm mauled!” he screams, and wakes up pressed to her from behind, hand on her breast and other arm still under his pillow, and says—

Falls back to sleep holding her the same way but not as tight. She doesn't seem to have moved from the position she fell asleep in. (So? So he's just saying; he thinks it's interesting, but if he later feels it isn't or it holds things up, out it goes.) Dreams he's at his apartment desk, typing. “This is the quai of strays, go to the fire, don't stop for pyre, do thumbthin but sucking the shit, as life isn't made to be staid sense of in a day or end yesterday, nor think a crown or two will help you bob.” Reads what he typed and says, “This is how I want to write from now on: dream walk with multiple illusions, or at the em and em till I've boringly exported it. I sow I'm in deep but when I alake I want to pure all these merdes down jest as they art ear. In crap they'll be the earth turds of my nest crook and will set the bone and smile for the best of it, one driveling into the udder before I've something that seeps. Now get a cake. That's a delivery!” Wakes up, has turned over, fingers around for his memo book and pen to jot down what he dreamt. Room's dark, no moon, and he doesn't want to turn the light on to write and wake her, so he'll print it in big letters on several pages. Finds the pen and book, opens both, but forgets what he dreamt. A concept. Something about fests and fakes? Rests and wakes? Neither; and he's sure nothing of that dream jungle can be used if he did remember it. Her body shivers and he gets an erection because he has his hand on her breast again and his groin's up against her bottom and he thinks wouldn't it be nice if she intentionally shoved her buttocks into him this time, usually a sign she's interested if she jiggles it and then turns her face toward his for a kiss, and he squeezes farther into her, makes sure the covers are over her shoulder, runs his hand up and down her leg and then around her nipple and she doesn't stir, and he thinks what can he do to get her interested and not infuriate her, and says—